Button Making

[PureMachine4]

How many teams have their freshmen/ 1st year attendee(rookie) make buttons before other team members? or hows your method of button making?

[Aignam]

Team 25 has a spirit crew, appropriately named the 'Volcano Crew' for our Hawaiian theme. They are responsible for the production of giveaways, mascot costumes, noisemakers, banners, and generally the promotion of team spirit at the events. The crew consists of members from varying grades, and is an essential part to our presence at ever FIRST competition.

[Blocker-9]

What is a team required to do (not counting the robot)?
How are other teams getting people to join FIRST Robotics?
What advise would other teams give to a Rookie team?

Stephanie Blocker
Team #1415

[Aignam]

Originally Posted by Blocker-9

What is a team required to do (not counting the robot)?
How are other teams getting people to join FIRST Robotics?
What advise would other teams give to a Rookie team?

Stephanie Blocker
Team #1415

This might be a conversation best left for 'Team Organization'. But, I'll give it a shot...

Teams aren't really required to do much more than play a robot. You can choose to be as active or helpful as you'd like. It all depends on your view of FIRST and your goals as a FIRST team.

Team 25 approaches schools within our region with students, demonstration robots, demo videos, and just an overall impressive array of interesting and captivating information. We try to get the students and teachers as excited as possible, showing them different ways that they can be on the road to FIRST in no time, and helping them get past difficult problems, such as sponsorship and school participation. Team 25 also demos in public areas and at conventions as much as possible. Just get the word out, be interesting, be fun, be sincere. Let them known the immense dedication required for a FIRST team, but also let them know how incredibly rewarding of an experience it can be.

Advice to a rookie team:
Keep your head up. Play the game to your best ability. Learn from your mistakes, learn from others. Take in as much as you can this year. Utilize local mentorship possibilities to their fullest extent. Mentorship is the key to FIRST.

[Pin Man]

I Love Buttons!!!

[Beth Sweet]

Our button making is left up to our group, the Chairman's Group. It's probably our secondary function but anyways...

We have everyone who has them submit design ideas and then we vote on the ones that we like. This year we have buttons for each group of our team (Animation, Chairman's and Engineering), a "game button," and a surprise design.

Then, we have button parties. And button parties are rather amusing... We all come over to my house, eat popcorn, watch chick flicks (yes, there are guys that we force this upon too!) and use the button makers to make mountains of buttons in the middle of the table. Just have fun with it!

[Jen Peters]

Buttons are awesome! This is our 5th season and we bought a new button maker this year. It's so much better than our old one and we make them twice as fast with little to no error!

In the past we have only had one main button, may two per year. Last year we started our "underground buttons" that were made in very limited quantities. This year we've gone button crazy! There are at least 5 designs and there will probably be more before Great Lakes.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally Posted by PureMachine4

How many teams have their freshmen/ 1st year attendee(rookie) make buttons before other team members? or hows your method of button making?

Last year we had mr button locally make our buttons. DISASTER!!! misspelled, didn't deliver to our address day before competition as promised...I refused to pay and he didn't argue.

FINALLY this year we'll be getting a
Button Maker

Make the freshmen make the buttons? Mmmm...smacks of our team a couple of years ago. Our version is find something to do, and you may find yourself making buttons.

[Mike Heinowski]

We have always made our buttons in the publicity (or Trinkets & Trash) group. We also have an unoffical rule that you have to make 100 or so buttons to go to nats. The hardest part is getting people to make logos for the buttons.

[Redhead Jokes]

Originally Posted by Akuu

We also have an unoffical rule that you have to make 100 or so buttons to go to nats.

thanks for the idea!

[Jen Peters]

All of our button making machines have been from Mr. Button. The two-step process machine that we bought this year has been a dream. We've made more buttons in the last few weeks than we ever have before at this point during build season.

Usually our P.R. team does the buttons, but every now and then our mechanical team wants to get in on the action. With the machine being so easy to use this year, everyone wants to make one.

[SarahBecker]

At our school, we have activities every Monday morning that people sign up for, one of them is Robotics. We have anyone who goes to that make buttons for us, and the people who have study halls or whatever can go in to our advisor's room and make buttons. Also, at meetings, if someone is finished with a job or whatever, they get the chance to make buttons!
Basically we are making buttons every day, every free moment we have!! And all of us do it! Not just the rookies!

[BandChick]

1089 usually gets together as an entire team and spends an afternoon cutting and making buttons. it's a LONG process but it gives us some bonding time and some time to be goofy. EVERYONE on our team helps cut out or put together buttons, almost in assembly line style (or last year anyway), and i think that's the way it should be. why should a freshman/rookie to the team be forced to do something they don't necessarily want to be doing? besides, it's not like making buttons is all that strenuous ;-)

[tiffany34990]

Yes on S.P.A.M. we like to make the rookies do lots of buttons-- they get to do various things that we veterans don't like to do. Buttons are not bad but for rookies we make them clean, take out the trash (taking out the trash is a bit hard for many of them) oh and file down parts--- we keep them busy!

[Aignam]

Team 25 uses a BADGE-A-MINIT machine. In recent years, we have borrowed a button machine from the school marching band, but for the 2004 season, one of our NJ FIRST RINOS projects was to buy a button machine to lend out to local rookie teams on a 2-week basis so that rookies didn't need to fundraise for the extra expense, but could still have something nice to give away at competitions. After we rushed to make our buttons in our 2-week period, we sent the button machine around to anyone who requested it.